Week 2 of Previews

Yesterday was our day off. Like our last one, October 3, I did absolutely nothing. Well I did get to make some progress setting up my new phone, which is a whole other category of blogging I need to catch up on. From this point on, I will get a day off every Tuesday, so hopefully once I get used to the concept I can make it more productive.

I'm realizing now why it is that sometimes shows don't seem to change very much during previews, or at least not as fast as an observer would think. While 18 hours of rehearsal in a week of 8 performances seems like a lot, it really isn't very luxurious. You really have to think in small chunks. "Today we work on this." There's not time to change everything that needs work in a 4-hour span, especially considering that when you change staging you also need to allow time to re-tech the scene. And then hope that you don't put it on stage that night and say, "Well that didn't work!"

Rehearsal is short-to-nonexistent on two-show days (either 2 hrs on one day, or one hour for each), so today we have no rehearsal, and it will be the same show we did on Monday night. We still have two weeks, but only a little over a week before the show should be frozen, so there's time, but not as much as it seems at first glance.

I'm not worried, I just find it interesting how even with a fairly long preview period, you have to be very careful about budgeting time to make sure the most needed work gets done.